Tynesia Cephas's aunt, Na'Cole Nichols, said the holidays were especially painful since her niece would always visit her Southbridge home.

It was even more difficult to know that despite the many people claiming to have been friends with Cephas, her niece's killer remains at large.

"It's just hard that we don't have her smiling, or laughing or playing or drawing," Nichols said. "It just hurts my heart that nobody wants to come forward to help us, and not only us, help her to get this guy off the streets because she didn't deserve what happened to her."

Her family continues to ask for the identity of the person who fatally shot the teen who tried to break up a fight in Wilmington's East Side neighborhood.

Cephas was one of 19 juveniles shot in Wilmington in 2017.

In an analysis published last year, The News Journal, USA TODAY and the Associated Press found that juveniles are more likely to be shot in Wilmington than any other U.S. city. The per capita data in Wilmington showed that roughly 3 out of every 1,000 adolescents are injured or killed every year from gun violence.